by Suman Gupta
Delhi, 9th November 2023 – Bharat Housing Network, a technology platform for co-lending in affordable housing, has raised 125 crores led by NABVENTURES Fund with participation by Varanium NexGen Fund, 9Unicorns, Riverwalk Holdings, SMK Ventures, DMI Sparkle Fund, LC Nueva and other investors. NABVENTURES Fund is India’s best performing VC fund focused on agri-food-rural tech including rural fintech backed by NABARD, SIDBI, Axis Bank, LIC and others. This is the seventh investment announced by NABVENTURES Fund in the first ten months of 2023.
Bharat Housing Network is India’s largest co-lending infrastructure for credit delivery in the affordable mortgages-priority sector. The platform provides capital, technology and infrastructure to housing finance companies and non-banking finance companies for housing credit delivery at the grassroot level. To drive growth and scale, the platform operates on a hybrid capital model-on and off-balance sheet lending.
Housing finance opportunity is vast in India. India’s growing population, rising household incomes and declining size of the average household is fuelling housing demand. The industry is expected to grow at a CAGR of 13-14% in the long run with home loans originations expected at Rs. 10.4 trillion by FY25 and Rs. 18.7 trillion by FY30. Demand is highest in the <Rs2.5mn ticket size category.
The co-lending platform is focused at building India’s largest network and infrastructure sharing platform for co-lending in impact sectors. The platform enables lenders to build priority sector assets without incurring significant capital and operating expenditure. Gross disbursements in the priority segment through the platform is targeted to reach $500 million in the next 3 years.
The platform’s integrated technology stack provides a complete co-lending solution to lenders for the affordable housing finance segment. Partners on the platform are able to co-lend with faster turnaround times and greater efficiency. Bharat Housing Network has onboarded 23 financial institutions and leverages partner branch network to deliver capital in 200 locations across 12 states. Since its inception in 2021, the platform has grown multi-fold while maintaining a high-class asset quality with near zero delinquencies.
The platform is enabling financial inclusion by empowering regional players to deliver credit across semi-urban and rural areas. It is focused on delivering housing credit to tier II, III and other cities to the low-income group and economically weaker sections of the society. The platform is contributing directly or indirectly to 13 UN Substantiable Development Goals (SDGs).
Rajesh Ranjan, CEO of NABVENTURES Fund commented, “Rapid urbanisation has led to an unprecedented increase in the demand for affordable housing. However, the shortage of affordable housing has affected millions around the world, particularly those with low and moderate incomes. In his Independence Day speech, Prime Minister had mentioned about ensuring affordable credit for poor and middle-class housing. Our investment in Bharat Housing Network builds on the stellar efforts of PM Awaas Yojana and other government initiatives to encourage low-cost housing and affordable loans for the same. Bharat Housing Network endeavours to bring down the cost of borrowing for home loan buyers in Bharat’s hinterlands. Bharat Housing Network is our seventh investment this year and we intend to invest in at least 9 startups by the year-end.”
Lalit Menghani, Founder added, “India needs a very strong housing sector to become a developed economy. Housing finance is at the core of our business model and we continue to innovate to make housing credit more accessible and affordable across income groups”
Equity360 was the financial advisor to the company on the transaction.
About Homeville: Bharat Housing Network is a platform owned by Homeville Consulting. Homeville is a technology company building infrastructure and credit platforms for the housing finance industry. The company will deploy the fresh proceeds to grow the affordable mortgage assets on the balance sheet and strengthen the technology platform.
Homeville is founded by Lalit Menghani, Madhusudan Sharma, and Prasad Ajinkya. The founders are IIM Alumni with over 17 years’ experience in finance, technology and real estate.
About NABVENTURES Fund: NABVENTURES is a venture growth equity fund with AUM of INR 598 crore that invests in food, agritech, and rural fintech. The fund has invested INR 315 crore in 13 startups viz. Vilcart, Beyond Snack, Jai Kisan, Bharat Housing Network, Unnati, Eggoz, Satyukt, KBCols Sciences, KrishiTantra, TraceX, a stealth fintech startup and FRAAZO (exited). NABVENTURES is backed by National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), the apex development finance institution of India with an AUM of USD 100 billion. NABVENTURES counts NABARD, SIDBI FoF, Axis Bank, LIC, SRI Fund, Kotak Bank, Bandhan Bank and other banks as its LPs. For further information on NABVENTURES, please visit:https://www.nabventures.in
